


be my beacon

by Omeganixtra



Series: Destiny Fictober 2019 [10]
Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: F/M, Fictober 2019, cayde is not very good at the whole "feelings"-thing, sundance is fucking done, the obligatory soul mate au, there are so many feels in this, this is a slightly sad one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-10
Updated: 2019-10-10
Packaged: 2020-12-14 13:03:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21016226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Omeganixtra/pseuds/Omeganixtra
Summary: Cayde resigns himself to a miserable, lonely existence and takes Andal’s cloak. If that fucker could stand being alone for all eternity then fuck it if Cayde can’t do it too.— the obligatory soul mate au that no one asked for but that I wrote anyway





	be my beacon

**Author's Note:**

> day 10: “Listen, I can’t explain it, you’ll have to trust me.”

Every Guardian has their Beacon.

Now, this is not something that everyone knows about, certainly not the civilians going about their lives down below the Towers and the Walls. Sure, they know about the Ghosts, sees them too whenever a Guardian deigns to saunter through the streets below, but the Beacons… no, no civilian ever hears that word uttered by the Guardians that protect them.

Of course, no one really knows why the Guardians have a Beacon. They already have their Ghosts, their Light, the Traveler really didn’t need to create even _more_ for its crazy gaggle of misfit children, but for some reason it did anyway.

For some it is an obsession. Some Guardians dedicate their second chance at life to find that certain someone, the Human or Awoken or Exo that resonates with their Light and Soul and Being. There are too many who have gone mad from the search, who have wasted away to nothing when they feel the Light of their special someone flicker out and _die_.

The Beacon is always another Guardian. It is always another Guardian who might already have been rezzed or will be, but you never know until you meet them.

For Cayde-6 his deepest, innermost wish has always been for Andal Brask to be his Beacon. He spends a truly ridiculous amount of time staring into Andal’s eyes with every chance that he gets, but all that it gets him are wry, confused smiles and raunchy comments from those around them. He hears whispers of how people might suspect that they are each other’s Beacons, but Cayde… well, Cayde knows the truth.

He never feels that longing inside of him abate whenever he looks at Andal, and for all that he knows, Andal has the exact same feeling. They are good friends, close as brothers, even, but they are not each other’s Beacons.

Knowing this almost makes it easier for Cayde to accept the fact that Andal is gone when Taniks slaughters him. _Almost_. He has seen what happens to those left behind after a Beacon is snuffed out. It’s like watching someone lose their soul, lose their Ghost—something that is too horrible to normally think of but what happens anyway because the mind is a terrible, horrible, wicked little thing when it wants to be.

But Cayde aches anyway.

He still longs for completion in that weird, fucked up way that he knows he shouldn’t feel anymore. After all, Andal is gone. The only one that he would ever want as a Beacon is _gone_, and here he still remains. A fuckup who couldn’t even manage to kill a Fallen proper after two attempts.

Cayde resigns himself to a miserable, lonely existence and takes Andal’s cloak. If that fucker could stand being alone for all eternity then fuck it if Cayde can’t do it too.

But then everything shatters into a million fucking pieces when one day, he spots a new little Guardian stumble inside the Tower.

She is leaking rainwater everywhere, and Cayde truly means _everywhere_, as she shuffles into the Hall of Guardians. In her hands she is cradling her Ghost and looks just so utterly confused that he can’t help but feel a pang of pity for the poor girl.

But then it hits him with all the subtlety of an Ogre’s stomp to the face.

Something inside of him _clicks_ when he actually gets a proper look at her, gets a proper read on her Light, and in an instant Sundance is out from her fold in his scarf and zooming straight towards the unsuspecting new Guardian. Cayde is just left there by his maps and his coffee, staring like a moron, as he takes in _everything_ about her.

Something inside of his chest makes his generator skip for a moment and a burst of static fizzles out through his voice box loud enough for Ikora to cast him a worried look. Cayde waves her off, but his eyes are still just _locked_ onto the new Guardian standing about twenty feet away from him. He sees the droplets of water trickle down her cheeks and feels the most impulsive urge to storm over there, and carefully dab her skin dry. He sees how her hair is starting to frizz from the sudden heat after being outside and drenched for so long, and he immediately wants to just sit down somewhere quiet with her and gently tease out the snarls and knots that are no doubt busy forming in the rat’s nest of hair that she has. He wants her everything, _to be_ her everything, and something inside of him screams for her to feel the same.

Good grief, she hasn’t even _looked_ at him.

“It’s _you_!” Sundance shrills and loops in the air right in front of the woman’s face, completely ignoring anything that might resemble a personal sphere, and all that Cayde can do is stand there with a horrified expression on his face as soon as he actually manages to understand what is happening.

With a curse he abandons his maps and the Warlock pestering him for news on when the next batch of bounties will drop in, and instead marches straight towards the frozen new Guardian.

“Alright, ‘Dance, that’s enough,” he snaps and beckons with his fingers to his Ghost. She spins in the air and lets out a _very_ undignified snort before doing as he asks and withdraws back to hover behind him. Cayde ignores the screeches of joy inside his head and instead focuses on the no doubt traumatized Guardian in front of him. “Sorry ‘bout her.”

“I-it’s, uh—” the poor girl stammers out. “It, it’s f-fine?”

Somehow it comes out as a question and Cayde’s not really sure that she meant for that to happen.

Cayde sighs and focuses on the Ghost cradled in her hands. “So, Hunter, I take it?”

“Yes, I believe so,” the little guy’s fin flickers up and down.

“Right, right, I guess I’ll take it from here, then,” Cayde nods and cracks a grin at the new Guardian. He can’t really tell if he succeeds or not. “Come on, let’s get you cleaned up.”

“Clea—what?” she blinks owlishly at him and Traveler above if that doesn’t do all kinds of weird fucking things to Cayde’s internal workings.

“Well, for starters you’re dripping water all over the floor and the clean-up frames are going to be mighty pissed ‘bout that,” he chuckles and gestures. “I also have a small thought that you might like to change out of that mismatched horror that you’re wearing.”

From behind him he can practically _hear_ Zavala’s frown. “Cayde, there are—”

“You know me, Zavala, always likes to get hands-on with the new kids. Besides,” Cayde throws a scathing grin in his colleague’s direction. “This one is _mine_.”

“Let him, Zavala, we all need a break from time to time,” Ikora notes from her own workstation without even glancing up at either of them. “We will reconvene later, hmm?”

“Aye-aye, Ma’am!” Cayde calls as he loops an arm around his new Guardian’s shoulders and drags her in the direction of the Hunter barracks.

His new little Guardian is stiff as a board as he drags her with him, looking at everyone and everything around them with wonderous, innocent eyes that just about _begs_ Cayde to peer closer, plaster himself to her side and never, ever, _ever _let go.

Fuck, he’s only just met the supposed other half of his immortal, Light-fueled soul and he’s already in deep.

After decades, fucking _decades_, he finally has his Beacon and of course it’s a fucking kinderguardian who probably hasn’t even seen the outside of space yet.

He can’t really blame her for being stiff when he’s pretty much the same at the moment. Cayde frowns and shakes his head, now is not the time for thinking about all of this. Right now, he has a fucking Guardian to see to, he can moon over her later when he’s in his own private quarters.

Cayde gets her to the barracks, smiles and waves at the few Hunters already there, and leads his little duckling to a free cot. He goes through the official storage units and hauls out a standard uniform and very pointedly does _not_ notice how he automatically just seems to have her size ingrained in his hard drives. Lucky guess, that’s all. After that he throws her in the direction of the communal showers and waits patiently outside as he hears the water run and the scent of soap floods his sensors.

She comes out a lot cleaner and a lot happier than when she entered and Cayde can’t stop the smile from spreading on his face.

_He_ did that. _He_ made her smile.

It’s a nice feeling, like a warm hug enveloping him.

“Thank you, sir,” she could have sounded like she’d rather be anywhere else than here and Cayde would still smile at her as if she had hung the Moon and the stars and the Sun in the sky.

He coughs and scratches at the back of his hood. “Sure, no problem… so, uh, ya got a name? I didn’t get it before when you came in.”

“It’s Meera, sir.”

Meera.

“Nice name,” he says lamely and Cayde just wants to go die in a ditch. “G-good name.”

She giggles. Cayde just about has a complete meltdown.

And then he shows her the basics. Where to get her guns [Banshee], where to go if her armor gets ruined [him, obviously], where to go to have a good time [the Tower bar, anywhere else automatically just sucks because it’s not the Tower bar]. Then she gets thrown at the Cosmodrome again, goes off with her Ghost and a wrecked gun that she can’t seem to get rid of, and has the fucking balls to come back a conquering hero with the head of a Fallen Archon.

Cayde’s proud as proud can be. But he doesn’t tell her, can’t tell her about being proud or about the Beacon-thing.

He doesn’t see her much after those first few missions.

She is swept up by a pair of Awoken who takes over as mentors, as her own Guardians, and Cayde feels his soul _screech_ every time that he sees her with their arms around her shoulders or when she smiles at them [_not him never him why not him?!_] or when she excitedly prattles on about the crazy stunts that the two of them drag her on.

There are times where the only thing holding Cayde back from backing those two Awoken into a corner and making them swear a blood oath on never letting harm come to his Meera, his Beacon, is the fact that then they’ll _know_, and then everyone will. That’s always how it goes, he’s seen it just earlier this day when a sobbing pair of Titans couldn’t be separated when they realized that they had just met their oh-so-wonderful significant other.

Cayde just about puked from the saccharine atmosphere.

So he doesn’t tell her.

Sundance hates him for it, hates that he keeps hurting every time that he sees Meera but stays away from her. Cayde hates himself for it, too. But it’s just what he deserves, he tells himself every time that he’s just about to actually do it, actually tell her.

He doesn’t want her, is what he tells himself. He wanted Andal—still wants Andal—but Andal is dead and buried and someone else out there either was or still is his Beacon. Not Cayde, never Cayde, who is saddled with a newborn, mewling Guardian still learning how to shoot a gun without ending up with sore muscles.

Traveler above, but he’s a _mess_.

But Cayde doesn’t let it show, at least not enough for it to be noticeable, because the last thing he needs right now is Ikora bearing down on him with that frown she makes whenever he’s being particularly thick-headed. But simply focusing on not letting it show is practically the same as slowly killing himself.

He _hurts_. He hurts in a way that he never has before every single time that he watches her take off from the hangar—he has a small spot known only to him, and that is where he obsessively hides away to watch her every time that she leaves, every time that she comes.

He can’t _not_ do it.

They stumble into each other one evening, both of them drunk on victory against the universe, against the Vex, against the Darkness and the wretched Black Garden.

She asks if she can trust him to help her win in a game of cards and Cayde laughs. He laughs and clutches at her shoulders—the only contact that he’ll allow himself, it’s just one night, what can go wrong from that?—for so long that she grows worried.

“Never trust a Hunter,” he tells her and winks. “At least not where cards are concerned.”

But he helps her win anyway.

After that it takes too long before Cayde sees her again, and when he does it takes only seconds before he has to restrain himself from going directly after Zavala’s throat.

He wants to send her to the Reef, to help bring down Skolas, to help slay Fallen—in that moment Cayde doesn’t see Meera, he sees Andal. He sees his brother, beaten and bloody and riddled with bullet holes, and he… he just _can’t_.

Before anyone can say anything Cayde storms from the briefing room, ignores the shouts from Ikora and Zavala that echoes after him.

The call of his name that comes from Meera sears itself into his mind. But he _doesn’t turn around_.

She finds hours later in his office, three shots deep in a bottle of vibrant green liquor, with Sundance at her side.

“Fuck off,” he growls and glares at her. Inside his office it is nice and dark, there’s no sunlight allowed through the thick blinds, and that’s just the way he likes it when he’s drinking.

“I was worried,” she retorts and the door closes noiselessly behind her.

Sundance huffs at his antics and floats to his side. She bumps against his horn and Cayde swats at her. He receives a jolt of electricity in return and curses.

“It’s you,” Sundance chirps and turns to Meera, utterly ignoring Cayde’s demands for her to shut up. “He’s an idiot and he’s pining and he won’t tell you because he thinks it’s bad. But it’s you, it’s always been you, and I am not letting either of you out of here before you talk this out.”

Then she disappears in a flash of Light and leaves the two of them alone.

Cayde slams his head against the desk, Meera just stands there not far from the now-locked door, and both of them are not quite processing what just happened.

“What did…” she shuffles her feet, looking utterly adorable. “What did your Ghost mean, sir?”

“Hmm?” Cayde is quick to fasten his eyes on the heaps of reports that have managed to breed freely on his desk. “Whaddya mean?”

“That thing she just said. B-back when—I-I mean, when I arrived, she said the same thing.”

“Yeah? What ‘bout it?”

“Your Ghost said ‘It’s you’ as if she had been waiting for me,” she says and Cayde can practically hear her frown. “I—I was jus—no, it’s silly.”

Fuck.

This is what he gets from keeping shit a secret for way too long. It comes back to bite him in the ass with a _vengeance_, and at the same time he can’t help but feel just a little happier that she is there, that his Beacon is here with him and if he just reaches out he can touch her and—_NO_.

He doesn’t want to. But… oh fuck, but he has to.

“Have you ever heard of Beacons, Meera?”

She blinks at him, confused.

“Right,” he coughs and leans back against his chair. “I—I’ll take that as a _no_.”

Cayde lets out a huff and beckons her closer. Meera sits on his desk, but everything about her screams _cautious_. He can’t help but hate himself, just a little bit.

“Listen, so… every Guardian has a Ghost, you know this, right?”

She nods.

“Well, what practically none of the new Guardians knows is that besides your Ghost you also have… your Beacon.”

“My Beacon?”

“Yup. Capitalized B and everything, that’s a Beacon. Now, they are supposedly the other half of your soul, whether you want it or not. Us Guardians have spent _centuries_ on trying to figure out why the Traveler gave us what basically amounts to a soul mate when we live the life that we do, and so far no one is closer to finding an answer.”

“So when Sundance said what she said back then… it was because that she thought I was… your Beacon?”

Cayde lifts his face enough for her to get a good look at it. He probably looks like he’s about to start crying, judging from her facial expression.

“You’ve felt it, right?” he asks quietly and looks up at her. She is nodding, looking scared as heck and Cayde can’t really blame her. “You feel happier when you are in the Tower, you are more animated, you smile easier, you sleep better.”

“Yes,” she rasps and hangs upon every single word that he utters.

“Listen, I can’t explain it, you’ll have to trust me.”

“Someone told me once to never trust a Hunter.”

There are tears gathering in the corners of her eyes and he hates himself.

“Well, that someone was wrong. At least regarding himself and you, he was,” Cayde admits and lets out a pained laugh. “Fuck, I never thought that I’d find my Beacon, I didn’t want to, for the longest time.”

“And then you did?”

“And then I did,” he nods. “I was angry and sad and… well, you know that I don’t exactly do _well_ with feelings, so I did the only thing that I thought made sense and that was to hide it all away.”

“You’re an idiot,” she says. “Stars, but you’re a fucking idiot.”

“Yeah,” he agrees because that’s all he can do right now.

He soaks in the attention that she gives him as she pushes the stacks of paperwork to the side, as she puts the cork into the bottle of booze and puts it on the ground and as she swings over the desk so that she can plant her feet on the arms of his chair and takes his face in her hands.

“I thought that I had done something wrong,” she whispers and Cayde’s eyes widen abnormally because _perish the fucking thought_. “I thought that whatever it was I had done was why you never spoke with me and always were so quick to leave whenever I was near. I thought that I had wronged you somehow and I didn’t understand why.”

“No!” he splutters. “No, you nev—oh Light, I’m such a fucking idiot!”

He tears himself out of her grasp and stands from the chair, pacing like a caged animal. His mind whispers that here he can be whatever he wants, here he has the support and love of his Beacon and that should be enough—it should be—but it isn’t. It never is. He looks at her with pained eyes and sees an equally pained woman, a Guardian—his Beacon—sitting on his desk with tears in her eyes and words stuck in her throat.

“Meera,” he whispers and reaches out for her. “_Please_.”

It is all that she needs before she stumbles over her own feet in order to get to him, and Cayde meets her halfway there. He presses her against him and she burrows into his neck and it is _glorious_. They both feel the Light around them lace together, searing jagged seams together into a whole, wonderous fabric, and for the first time in who knows how long Cayde-6 looks at his Beacon with nothing but _love_ in his eyes.

“I am yours and you are mine,” he breathes and presses his lips to hers. “You are _everything_, and I will _never_ doubt that ever again.”

Meera simply laughs and presses closer.

They have found each other, they have found their Beacons, and all is right with the world.


End file.
